Microsoft just made the iPad an even harder sell

People
just aren’t buying iPads right now, and Microsoft just gave
potential customers an even tougher decision: Buy a baseline iPad
for $500, or buy a new Surface 3 computer, which comes the full
Windows experience, for the same price?

Microsoft unveiled
its new Surface tablet-laptop hybrid on Tuesday. It
comes with 64GB of storage and 2GB of RAM to start, but the
most important distinction between this product and past
Surface tablets is its operating system: This computer runs the
full version of Windows, including desktop applications, and also
comes with a one-year subscription to Office 365, Microsoft’s
suite of productivity applications. This will make the Surface
very business- and enterprise-friendly right out of the
box.

In comparison, Apple’s $500 iPad Air 2
only comes with 16GB of storage to start. It has hundreds of
thousands of specially-made applications, but it can’t run
desktop applications from the Mac, and it doesn’t have a
kickstand for multiple viewing angles while sitting flat on a
desk — you'd need to buy a third-party accessory for that. And
the Surface 3 is particularly useful on those occasions where
it’s easier to write or draw using a stylus than use the
touchscreen or touchpad on the keyboard.

The Surface 3 also has a larger display than the
iPad (10.8 vs. 9.7 inches), has a better front-facing camera (3.5
megapixels vs. 1.2 in the iPad) and it takes 1080p video; the
iPad still only records in 720pHD. You shouldn’t be shooting too
much video on these devices anyway, but it’s still important to
know for certain niche use cases.

While it’s unclear how Apple plans to spark iPad
sales again — the company is rumored to be working on a bigger
12- or 13-inch tablet with new features aimed at productivity in
the enterprise — the Surface 3 already looks like a solid
contender that’s more affordable and possibly even more
functional and useful than an iPad. This is especially true for
large businesses that rely on internally developed programs that
aren’t totally compatible with iPads and other tablets. It will
be interesting to see how Apple responds in the near-future with
its own hardware and software offerings.